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“I don’t want to ruin it.”
“Then don’t turn dinner into a trial where you submit evidence and wait for a verdict.”
“That isn’t what I intended.”
“You’ve rehearsed an apology.”
Her silence answered for her.
“How many times?” I asked.
“Enough that the speech stopped sounding like me.”
“Then I don’t want it.”
She looked down at her plate. “Ryan—”
“I’m not saying I’ll never listen. I’m saying I don’t want the whole fucking autopsy tonight.” I lowered my voice as conversations rose around us. “Let us have dinner. Afterward, I’ll walk you to your room, and we can talk a little without every asshole we know pretending not to listen.”
Her eyes lifted. “Something.”
The hope inside the word nearly made me take the offer back. “Something,” I confirmed. “Don’t turn it into more than I gave you.”
“I won’t.”
“I mean it, Charm.”
“I hear you.”
The answer stopped me.
She didn’t insist I misunderstood her. She didn’t search my face for evidence that I was rejecting her or ask me to reassure her that something remained between us. She accepted the boundary exactly as I gave it.
“You hear me,” I repeated.
“I’m trying to.”
A server interrupted before I could decide why those three words hit harder than any apology she’d rehearsed.
Dinner began moving around us. Conversation crossed the tables while Daniel argued with one of his brothers about tomorrow’s lawn games and Bliss attempted to enforce rules nobody wanted to hear. Charm moved through dinner without checking the room for someone else’s approval. She laughed when Bliss threatened Daniel with seating-chart consequences, disagreed with Aura without softening her opinion, and remained inside every conversation instead of performing for it.
I noticed because there had been a time when every change in her breathing warned me that anxiety was about to drag her somewhere I couldn’t follow.
She caught me watching after several minutes. “What?”
“Nothing.”
“That wasn’t nothing.”
“I was watching you.”
The ease between us tightened. “Because you’re worried?”
“Because you used to make it impossible not to worry.”
“I know.”
“How are you?”
